Mongolia travel guide

Our Mongolia travel guide is an essential piece of kit for anyone longing to know what we consider to be rated, underrated and overrated as well as featuring a brief history of Mongolia and how to travel like a local on your Mongolia holiday.

Mongolia travel guide

One of life’s great freedoms is adventure, a privilege most of us take for granted and that isn’t always compatible with our organised, routine lives. A trip to Mongolia represents the ultimate adventure and a chance to experience true wilderness. People might misconceive Mongolia’s wilderness for desolate wasteland; it isn’t.

Staring at the wide open horizon in the untouched land of the nomads, there is no first meeting more captivating than an introduction to Mongolia

Instead, it is an entire country of undiscovered beauty – a sea of rolling steppe, unimpeded but for the shadow of clouds for miles; a collision of mountains, forest and snow-capped peaks; and a vast golden desert of towering sand dunes and camps below the stars. There are more horses than people in Mongolia, and five times as many sheep and goats; it has almost nothing man-made to attract tourists and is an outdoor country with a strong personality, a traditional heritage that’s still very much alive, and a gentle and friendly people – exactly why everyone who visits it is instantly captivated.

Mongolian hospitality

Historically, the Mongolians are a very welcoming people and their hospitality is like nowhere else in the world; nomadic culture dictates that even during his absence, a herder will leave his ger unlocked so that weary passers by can rest there. You will be greeted warmly with a nod and a smile then swiftly offered airag (‘vodka’), all manner of dairy products and probably some snuff too.
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The Great Outdoors

Picture your ideal ‘great outdoors’ scene, now remove any hedges, fences, even people that may have found their way in - Mongolia is truly an opportunity to immerse yourself in nature at its wildest. Herds roam across its wide-open grasslands; horses gallop freely, even the yaks look happy. Fishing, trekking, horse riding, you can do it all, and then flop, fulfilled, under the stars.
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Western Mongolia

You cannot get more rugged and remote than Western Mongolia, a truly untouched land of mountains swathed in glaciers and iridescent salt lakes all held together by a patchwork of nomadic tribespeople including the melodic Myangads, known for their traditional khoomii throat singing, and the Kazakhs, who still practice the ancient art of hunting with golden eagles.
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Warrior training

Come on, who doesn’t want to be a Mongol warrior? Led by Genghis Khan, the medieval equivalent of Bruce Willis, the Mongols are the strongest and most stealth military force in history and you can be one, if only for a few days. Try your hand at archery and lassoing, pick up riding skills and learn the secrets behind their battle strategies, all the while dressed in traditional ‘deel’ clothing.
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Ger Camps

Gers are the circular, felt-lined homes of more than half of Mongolia’s population and you will see them everywhere, scattered like miniature circus big tops across the landscape. Some are more tourist-driven offering showers and fridges full of beer, and others are the real deal – nothing but home-cooked food and the comforting crackle of burning wood keeping you warm.
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Horse trekking

About as off-the-beaten-track as you can get, Mongolia’s landscape is still largely undeveloped, so though extraordinary areas of natural beauty exist, they’re hard to reach on two legs or four wheels - your best bet is to do as the nomads do and find a four-hooved friend to take you across rivers and along mountainsides at a leisurely, stress-free pace.
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Gobi Desert

The Gobi Desert might be arid, but it is awesome – a sprawling patchwork of desert basins and mountain ranges punctuated by fascinating rock formations, mammoth sand dunes and hot springs. The incredible pink and white limestone cliffs that mushroom up and out from the surrounding sands at Tsagaan Suvraga is just one of the natural phenomena you can encounter.
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Festivals

Racing, wrestling, archery and of course the warrior spirit of Genghis Khan all collide in Mongolia’s colourful and captivating calendar of festivals, which are all at once a sort of tipsy blend of the Olympics and Christmas Day. Top of the tree? Mongolia’s Nadaam Festival, a riotous affair that combines traditional sport, lashings of airag and loads of good old-fashioned fun.
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Lake Khovsgol

Known as the Blue Pearl, Lake Khovsgol holds 380 billion litres of freshwater, but is becoming grubbier because there are so many ger camps being developed around its edge. Add to this the imminent threat from sunken oil tankers that have broken through the frozen lake and sunk during its use as an ice road to Russia and you have a ticking pollution time bomb.
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Independent travel

Mongolia may be growing in popularity, but it’s not quite set up for independent travel just yet. It remains challenging to travel around, but experienced, responsible operators can reveal a whole other side to the country. They have spent years getting to know Mongolia and Mongolians, and can take you well off the beaten track, to stay with local families in towns and camps, to meet musicians and be led by local, often female, guides.
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Flaming Cliffs at Bayanzag

Unless you’re a budding paleontologist, a visit to the Flaming Cliffs at Bayanzag isn’t necessary to appreciate the splendour of the Gobi Desert. Dinosaur fossils have been found there, but it’s a bumpy five hour drive to get to and oddly, it’s not officially protected, so litter, sandstone being broken off by tourists, and surrounding saxual forest being used for firewood are not uncommon sights.
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Naran Tull Market

There is nothing appealing about Ulaanbaatar's Naran Tull Market, a dark, dank and mostly concrete market that’s too loud, brash and full of fakes to be remotely authentic. This so-called 'Black Market' also notorious for pick-pockets and bag slashers, so a thoroughly avoidable shopping option – your money is much better spent on local handicrafts from people that need it and work hard to produce them.
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Food, shopping & people

Vegetarians take note: if it derives from cattle, sheep, horses or yaks, Mongolians eat it; so-called ‘vegetable soup’ is full of meat, but for one green ingredient.

Airag = Mongolian moonshine. Strong and dangerous, but it beats another cup of salty tea.

Tsagaan idee are traditional dishes made from dairy as the inclusion of milk in Mongolian food denotes kindness.

Boodog is a speciality made by cooking a whole carcass usually of a goat, from the inside using hot stones.

People & language

When you meet a Mongolian stranger, smile, nod your head and say “sain bain uu?”

Rural Mongolians are among the last semi nomadic people in the Northern Hemisphere. As well as ethnic Mongols, there are over 20 subgroups including the Khalkhas and the Kazakhs, who all happily co-exist, mainly due to the peace-loving Buddhist religion that unites them. Mongolians speak Mongolian as well as ethnic languages. Older Mongolians tend to speak Russian, many younger people now speak good English, French or other Asian languages.

Mongolians meeting one another will not kiss on the cheek; instead the elder person will grasp the head of the younger and smell their hair or face.

People & language

When you meet a Mongolian stranger, smile, nod your head and say “sain bain uu?”

14 million more people live in the Netherlands than in Mongolia, but you could fit the Netherlands into Mongolia 37 times.

New Way Life in Ulaanbaatar is a quilting and design centre established to help unemployed poor women how to quilt – purchase one of their unique pieces and you’re directly supporting local enterprise.

Mary & Martha is the only recognised Fair Trade shop in Mongolia and sells beautiful local handicrafts made from cashmere and felt.

Nomadic herders let no part of their beloved cattle go to waste; you can pick up intricate bone art and inscribed leather purses and wallets from local tribes for as little as £1.

Gifts & shopping

No one knows what Genghis Khan looked like; flattering myth has made him tall with a flowing head of hair and a bushy beard

How much does it cost?

Bus ticket: 20p

Kilo of fruit: 95p

Basic lunch: £1.25 - £2.50

Bike rental: £9

Bottle of beer: 95p

How much does it cost?

A brief history of Mongolia

Spanning 5,000 years, the history of Mongolia is anything but brief, but the bones are that until 1206 when Chinggis Khan (who we know as Genghis) founded the Mongol Empire, large numbers of ethnic tribes had inhabited the country, factions of which occasionally formed confederations that rose to prominence. Read more

It was Chinggis, though, whoreally kicked it all off for Mongolia, establishing the largest empire in history and one that extended from present-day Poland in the west, to the Korean peninsula in the east, and from Siberia in the north to Vietnam in the south. The empire covered a total area of over 33 million km2.

Following Khan's death in 1227, the empire was subdivided, conquered and suffocated into submission for centuries and was ruled by China's Qing dynasty until 1911. That year saw the Qing dynasty fall and, but Mongolia found a friend in Russia in 1920. Thus began a long period of Russian support for the country and the emergence of a socialist Mongolia ruled by a Soviet-dominated communist regime for almost 70 years.

In March 1990, a democratic revolution that started with hunger strikes to overthrow the government led to the peaceful renouncement of communism. Mongolia adopted a multi-party system, a new constitution and transitioned to a market economy; over the past three decades, it has embraced political and economic reform and is now one of the world's fastest growing economies.
This has not come without its drawbacks, however, and the withdrawal of Soviet support in the country has since triggered widespread poverty and unemployment, particularly during the 'lost decade' of the 1990s.

Today, around 45 percent of the population lives in the capital, Ulaan Baatar, while approximately 40 percent of the country's working population herd cattle in the extensive pasturelands, leading semi nomadic lifestyles. As with any rapidly industrialising nation, this centuries-old tradition is coming under pressure from climate change and urbanisation. Furthermore, Mongolia sits on vast quantities of untapped mineral wealth, and although foreign investment in a number of massive mining projects is expected to transform the country yet more over coming years, how much of that wealth will feed back in to supporting the rural people that really need it is yet to be seen.